Good handguns

jetguy

top 3 handguns on my list

1) FNH five seveN
Five-seveN® ODG Handgun

2)taurus judge public defender
Taurus International Manufacturing Inc

3)S&W bodygaurd
Product: BODYGUARD® 380

ImportConvert

If I had the cash on me right now, I would buy a FiveSeven. It looks like a fun toy/good varmint pistol, and very accurate, too!

dad

I don't think so!

Shooting Times: LAPD SWAT

Calguns.net - View Poll Results

Sig P220 or 1911? - Calguns.net


Calguns.net - View Poll Results

Calguns.net - View Poll Results


Any 1911 torture tests? - Calguns.net

Calguns.net - View Poll Results

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That link you provided, the whole site is devoted to the 1911--Not a very good debate, if you ask me!

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bullitt5897

Import you have owned 2 1911's and experienced the downside of bad quality control... My dan wesson Valor is a work of art! And is flawless!!! It is extremely reliable... Another really reliable 1911 brand is Kimber. Try one of those and experience the real joy of a true reliable 1911

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SmoothZ

Too bad the criminals don't give a hoot about that.

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I simply don't trust the 1911. I have owned the nicest (supposedly) 1911's on the planet short of the 6-month-1-year custom jobs out there. They sucked. Kimber is far FAR below a Supergrade Wilson Combat regarding the QC it goes through. I don't think anything was technically out of spec on my Wilson (as 1911's have some things that a specification doesn't exist for, per se, such as the profile on the extractor, how it is tensioned, where it is bent exactly, etc.), it just wouldn't run for beans. 1911's are like that. You can take something like a Kimber and have great luck with it, or you can buy something hand-fitted that has all forged parts, etc. like a upper-model WIlson, and have all sorts of trouble. The 1911 requires a dose of chance to get running I think. The extractor is hand-profiled (or should be), hand tensioned, etc. "it's all in the wrist" with a 1911, so to speak. I don't find that comforting. I would rather a Glock where you install the parts that are to spec, and it runs like a top.

Just because LAPD swat uses something doesn't make it that great. The USSS and the FAMS use SIG. Does that mean SIG is the end-all, be-all since it is trusted to guard the president? No, I don't think that, either. It just means they are the ones that won the contract.


No thanks, Glock for me when it counts.

All those polls I was linked to included trigger (the 1911 wins here) ergonomics (I think it is very ergonomical, but I can shoot Glocks just as well, many others cannot), etc. Reliablity was just ONE of the factors in those polls. The poll wasn't even TITLED "reliability".

Listen to Hilton Yam and many others who are proponents on the 1911--they go down more often than the Glock. The reason that they are issued to people like LAPD SWAT is because LAPD swat can afford to support the weapon, there are more than 1 person on the team who can take a shot, and they need something accurate that has a great trigger that is easy to train someone to shoot accurately--that is the 1911, I agree.

What the user of that pistol ISN'T tasked with is: maintenance (they have an armorer), replacing and filing/fitting parts (again...armorer), and if their weapon jams/malfunctions, they have a teammember who can cover their arse (I don't.).

I am not LAPD swat. I am just another guy who wants to be able to defend himself, and 16 rounds of 9mm vs. 8 rounds of .45 in a weapon that is proven to be less reliable in every experience I have had with it, isn't the way for me to go.

The point being, when compared objectively, the 1911 just isn't as reliable as Glock. How could it be? It has more parts. It has parts requiring hand-fitting and hand-tensioning instead of spring-tensioned (Extractor), and it has a lot closer tolerances all the way around that, in my experience, don't do a whole lot for accuracy considering a bone-stock Glock/SIG from a ransom rest will shoot 1" groups at 25 yards just fine, at least, mine does (well, hand-held off a sand-bag it produces reliable groups of 5-shots under 1.5" at 25 yards using bonded bullets, which are not known for being the most accurate). A 1911 has a better trigger, although I can shoot a Glock trigger just fine, and some find it more ergonomic, but as far as "going bang", no.

SmoothZ

Interesting. My neighbor loves the 1911 and has several. Then again, I know he hasn't shot thousands of rounds through them.

I agree about the guns and contracts. I used to carry a Glock and really liked it. Now I have to carry a Sig, which is fine since they're all 'tools in my toolchest.' However, I don't shoot as well as I did with the Glock. Maybe I'm getting older, maybe the gun just doesn't fit well with me.

I hope we go back to the Glock, and so do many others I work with.

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"Once you go Asian, you never go Caucasian."

"I talk to myself, and when I do that, I know I'm talking to an intelligent person."

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I find that I am most accurate with whatever pistol I have put the most time in with lately. I prefer the feel of the glock, though. The SIG has a more verticle grip, the 1911 feels too thin, but the Glock fills my hand and points naturally.

I have put thousands of rounds through one of my SIG's, and it was a lemon. It broke the take-down lever (bad batch, the lever part pivoted around the "bar" part, not a true "break"), and would FTE anything that was nickle-plated (Ranger-T, Gold-dots, etc.) Sig fix both problems for me, free of charge. It was one of the first P226 Elite's, and in 9mm, I don't feel the SIG is that good in the stainless platform. It ejects lazily, slide-mass is a bit much for the 9mm, stainless has a higher coefficient of friction, etc.

My next SIG was an Elite ST in 357SIG. This one felt a lot better from the word "go". NEVER had ANY failure of any sort, and after GGI worked it over, it shoots amazing. THey didn't touch the barrel/lock-up and it shoots better than most X5's they have had in their shop. 1.25-1.5" groups at 25 yards was what they were getting out of it with boring regularity.

The Glocks I have owned and shot have all just been boringly reliable.

The HK's, the same, except for one USP that had an unknown amount of rounds through it/the mag, that would fail to lock back on the last round. Common issue with USP 45's and a weak mag-spring.

The 1911's, well, I could write a book about the fail between the Les Baer, Wilson, and Colt.

I really like HK, but Glock does just as well for me, for less money, and it carrys well.

PS. Check out Hogue's new G10 grips for the P226, if that is what you are carrying. They are very grippy/nice and transformed the feel of mine. Still a bit "verticle", but it feels better.

SVTNate

I've never had an issue with a 1911 aside from the KZ45 I mentioned, but I prefer Glock as well. My buddy's CQB has about 10,000 trouble-free rounds through it and the original Armor-Tuff still looks nearly new.

Bruce Gray did my Sigs too. My P226R and P220R are both two-tone with Nills grips from Germany, GrayGuns competition packages, and Warren Tactical rear/Dawson front sights.

ImportConvert

Bruce Gray and his outfit do awesome work. The best you will find on a SIG. It just takes a while sometimes. Torie is the one who worked over the sear/hammer in that SIG, and it feels great. About 95% as good as that Wilson Supergrade's trigger in SA. I went with the hogue G10's and had the meprolites swapped for Trijicons. Had the Combat takedown lever installed as well. Not going to risk snapping it with the 357SIG round.

The armor-tuff on my Tactical Supergrade was the black color (I have heard the gray is weaker?). One case-ding, and it was gone down to the parkerizing. They re-finished it once when they re-tuned the extractor. It only hit the slide once after that (although it was then only 90% reliable on the last round). That, too, nicked down to the parkerizing. Armor-Tuff < QPQ. That is why I had my P226 Elite ST done in QPQ. No scratches, and it looks great!

dad

Choose your ammo
...police style

By Massad Ayoob


One of our greatest modern gun experts, Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC, Ret., once made the observation that the bullet is more important than the gun. The gun, he explained, is merely the launcher. It is the bullet that actually does the job.

This is true for an armed citizen’s home defense gun, as surely as it is for the battle weapon of one of Col. Cooper’s brother Marines. Ditto for the police officer’s ammunition. And ditto again for the bullet a rural American citizen uses to harvest game for the family table.


The military is bound by the codes of international warfare, going back to the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Accords, all of which predated napalm, chemical warfare, and the concept of thermonuclear war. Interestingly, the Judge Advocate General’s office has already determined that these restrictions apply to declared wars between recognized nation-states, not things like the current “war on terrorism,” but that’s another story.

The Geneva Conventions and Hague Accords require that the bullets used not be designed to expand. Essentially, they call for full metal jacket projectiles that just punch neat, clean holes through the bodies of enemy soldiers. Ironically, in the name of human decency, virtually every state in the union forbids the use of such ammunition against deer, bear, or other big game. The reason is that it tends to result in slow death and is not humane.

In warfare, the bullet that wounds an enemy soldier becomes a greater “force multiplier” than the one that kills him. A dead soldier means one less enemy. A wounded soldier means at least three less of the enemy: one down, and two more to carry him off the field of battle.

I am sure that this makes good sense to the generals behind the lines, and the bean counters behind them. However, the soldier who is bad breath distance away from an Al-Qaeda fanatic with an AK47 doesn’t just want his opposite number wounded, he wants him instantly out of the fight at the moment the bullet hits him.


At this point, both the semantics and the ethics of the matter start to become complicated. No young man fighting for his country wants, when he thinks about it, to end the life of another young man fighting for his country. However, that young man desperately wants the other young man not to kill him or one of his comrades. Therefore, the job of the bullet he launches is instant incapacitation.

This may cause death. When you get into it deep enough, you realize that the righteous combatant does not shoot to kill, he shoots to stop. A mortal wound is not enough. Many an American soldier who was mortally wounded went on to kill so many of the enemy before he ran out of blood and died that the majority of those on the sacred list who won the Congressional Medal of Honor won it posthumously. Every combat soldier who fought in heavy battle can tell you stories of enemy soldiers who, wounded unto death, still took one or more Americans with them. These men had been killed, but not stopped.

In the big picture, the firearm is a tool. We homo sapiens are the tool-bearing mammal. We are also, ipso facto, the weapon-bearing mammal. We have become the dominant species—the alpha, the top predator if you will—because we have learned to tailor our tools to the given task.

Therefore, Logic 101 tells us, if we must tailor the tool to the task, and if the tool is the gun and we know that the gun’s bullet is more important than the gun itself, why, we realize with our superior human brains that selection of ammunition is absolutely critical.

The history of law enforcement ammunition selection is a good one to study because it encompasses all four of the basic models of selection that the civilian will have available. It is from experience that common sense is born, and the police sector has that experience.


Four models
There are essentially four models that police used for selection of ammunition over the years. They might be described as the Traditional Model, the Advertising Model, the Laboratory Model, and the Experiential Model.


Police calibers today, in order of popularity. .40 S&W is far and away the most used. .45 Auto and .357 SIG are increasing in popularity. 9mm use is waning greatly in law enforcement.


The Traditional Model was used for the first two thirds of the 20th Century—longer by some of the more institutionalized departments—and it failed miserably. The .38 Special revolver was the standard then, using 158-grain round-nose lead ammunition with a muzzle velocity of 755 feet per second, generating some 200 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle.

This ammunition, from the beginning, performed dismally at its intended purpose. The rounded tip of the bullet slipped through flesh with a wedge effect, leaving behind it a dimpled channel similar to an ice pick wound. It would kill, but slowly. However, it had little “stopping effect.” The round became known on the street as “the widow-maker,” because you could empty your gun into your attacker and he could still make your wife a widow before he went down. Because the bullet tended to go through and through, there was great danger of striking an unseen bystander behind the intended target with the exiting projectile. Because of its low energy, this same bullet that penetrated too much on humans penetrated too little on hard barriers, such as car doors and windows, often bouncing off a felon’s windshield.

In the late 1920s and the ‘30s, efforts were made to find something more powerful. These included the .38/44 round, simply a high velocity 158-grain .38 Special; the .38 Super Automatic from Colt, with a pointy nose 130-grain full metal jacket bullet at some 1200 foot per second, generating perhaps 420 foot-pounds of energy; and the .357 Magnum cartridge jointly introduced by Smith & Wesson (the gun) and Winchester-Western (the cartridge). In the Magnum, the 158-grain bullet was retained, but with a flat point and much greater velocity and energy.

These hotter loads were better man-stoppers if heavy bone was struck and shattered, or if the bullets hit a liquid part of the body, such as the brain or a full bladder. Otherwise, they simply zipped through the body with even more exit force than a .38 round nose, and most police chiefs banned them for fear of their corollary damage capability to bystanders.

The .38 Special round nose stayed dominant for the first two thirds of the 20th Century, simply because of tradition. “It’s what we’ve always had.” “We’ve always done it this way.” Not until the 1960s did things get better. Lee Jurras in Shelbyville, Indiana, founded the Super Vel ammunition company and produced a line of light weight, high velocity hollow point rounds. With these, the .38 Special now had an expanding bullet that would open up or “mushroom” in the body. It delivered much more “shock effect” and was much less likely to exit. It was also much less likely to ricochet, which round nose bullets were and are infamous for doing.


Now was born the Experiential Model. Police departments that took the bold step of adopting the new ammo were inundated with queries from other agencies as to how it had performed. When learning of its highly satisfactory results, the inquiring agencies adopted it themselves.

With widespread adoption came more collective experience. Police had at last fallen back to their core competence—being trained investigators—and applied it to equipment selection. The result was much better ammunition and a quantum leap in both officer safety and public safety.

In the mid-1970s we saw the first large-scale application of the Laboratory Model. In what is now recognized as a classic example of junk science, the National Institute of Justice spent seven figures on a study to determine RII, or Relative Incapacitation Index, of handgun ammunition. Using an old formulation of ballistic gelatin as flesh simulant, the testers went on the assumption that whatever bullet created the greatest temporary cavity in the substance would deliver the greatest “stopping power” in living tissue. They then set about quantifying stopping power value, with tables that indicated the old .38 round nose might be a better stopper than the Army .45, and that a 9mm automatic with ball ammunition would be more potent than the .45. “Softnose” bullets received the same value as hollow points.

The expensively funded study had the prestige of the U.S. Government behind it, and departments flocked to buy ammunition that rated well in the RII studies. Unfortunately, they were doomed to disappointment.

The RII results flew in the face of three quarters of a century of observed reality. The first test of junk science versus real science is, “Do the results from the laboratory correlate with known factors from the field?” If they do not, we know something went wrong in the lab. Many of the hypothetical conclusions that the RII study put forth as written in stone were in fact 180 degrees off from a large body of observed reality. That early warning signal was ignored, and the results were tragic.


Many of the quick-expanding bullets favored by the RII study would not penetrate deeply enough into a human body to reach the vital organs of a large man from certain angles. In Michigan, a policewoman fired two light, fast .38 hollow points into a gunman’s chest, and apparently believing that this had done the job, lowered her service revolver. Instead of collapsing, however, the assailant raised his gun and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. He survived to stand trial. In Miami, a bullet that had done well in the RII tests was fired into the chest of a gunman who, unfazed, then shot and killed the man who shot him and his partner, both FBI agents, and wounded several more agents before being killed by bullets in the head and neck.

This resulted in the FBI Wound Ballistics Workshop of 1988 in Quantico, Virginia. Among those present were Dr. Martin Fackler, head of wound ballistics research for the US Army’s medical training center, Letterman Institute. Fackler had developed an improved ballistic gelatin model that he had scientifically correlated to swine muscle tissue, which in turn is comparable to human muscle tissue. He hypothesized that wound depth was much more important than previously thought, and recommended ammunition that could send a bullet at least twelve inches into his ballistic gelatin.

The FBI agreed. By this point, the 9mm semiautomatic pistol had ascended to dominance over the six-shot service revolver in the police world, and the FBI adopted a heavy, slow moving 9mm bullet that weighed 147 grains and traveled at a subsonic velocity of less than 1000 feet per second.

Even this did not work terribly well. The bullet often went deep, but also frequently failed to expand reliably, and penetrated too far. Most departments that adopted it were so disappointed in the street results that they either changed ammunition or went to more powerful pistols.


Meanwhile, in a classic example of the Experiential Model, Detroit homicide detective Evan Marshall had begun a collection of thousands of police gunfight reports, and attempted to rate the stopping power of the ammunition used based on what actually happened in gunfights. He was soon joined by ballistic researcher Ed Sanow. In a separate study commissioned by the Police Marksman Association, Richard Fairburn analyzed gunfights submitted to his data base by various agencies, and his results were almost identical to those of Marshall and Sanow in identifying the best performing police handgun rounds.

Meanwhile, the Advertising Model—taking the manufacturer’s grandiose claims for having the newest and deadliest ammo at face value—had quickly failed. Winchester’s early Silvertip performed dismally in most handgun calibers, though it would later prove itself in subsequent generations of improved ammunition. Federal’s Hydra-Shok series worked superbly in .45 caliber, but performed less effectively with some smaller diameter bullets. The police soon learned to trust only the Laboratory and Experiential Models, preferably in combination.


Combined models
Experience has taught police that what actually happens on the street is more important than what happens in the artificial environment of the laboratory. The 9mm round now acknowledged to work the best is a 124-grain to 127-grain high tech hollow point at a velocity of 1250 feet per second. NYPD, with some 30,000 officers carrying this type of ammo, the Speer Gold Dot +P 124-grain, is happy with the performance of its 9mm service pistols. Ditto the Orlando, Florida, Police Department, which uses the Winchester Ranger 127-grain +P+ in their standard issue 9mm SIGs.





Most other departments have gone to more powerful rounds. The .40 S&W caliber is the overwhelming top choice of police departments today, followed by the .357 SIG and the .45. Created to duplicate the best ballistics of the .357 Magnum revolver in a semiautomatic pistol, the .357 SIG spits a 125-grain jacketed hollow point at 1300 to 1400 feet per second, delivering 500-plus foot-pounds of energy. Departments which have adopted it are delighted with the performance, reporting a high frequency of one-shot stops. The Virginia State Police, who issue the .357 SIG Model P229 pistol, told me that they were particularly pleased with the number of felons who dropped and stopped fighting after receiving non-fatal wounds in non-vital parts of the body.

In .40 caliber, the original 180-grain hollow point at subsonic velocity has worked better than expected, but the star performers in .40 ammo tend to be high tech bullets such as the Winchester SXT or Ranger T, the CCI Gold Dot, and the Remington Golden Saber with 155-grain bullets at 1200 foot-seconds or 165-grain bullets at 1140 to 1150 feet per second. Using the 165-grain Ranger in their .40 caliber Glocks, the Nashville, Tennessee, Police have amassed a long series of impressive one-shot stops.

In .45 caliber, the matured Federal Hydra-Shok design is something of a gold standard, and the Winchester SXT, Remington Golden Saber, and CCI Gold Dot also have delivered impressive performance in the field. These bullets reliably open up and get the job done. In .45 Auto, the 230-grain bullet at some 880 foot seconds has become standard in police work. Note that all of these are high-tech projectiles, what is known in the trade as “premium ammunition.”


Premium ammo
High tech bullets are more expensive to manufacture. The bonded core of the Gold Dot, the interlocked bullet body and jacket of the SXT, the post in the center of a Hydra-Shok’s hollow point, and the driving band that surrounds the base of a Golden Saber bullet are all more expensive to manufacture and therefore cost more. Why do police departments that buy on bid specify this premium ammunition? Because it works better, and with human life on the line, they cannot afford to economize.


The same is true for the hunter, to a degree. Life may not be on the line, but performance is still important. If you are shooting a small deer at relatively close range with a high-powered hunting rifle, conventional hunting ammo bought in a “value-pack” at Wal-Mart will probably be good enough. However, if you are aiming at a thousand pound moose, and winter meat for the family hinges on the bullet performing its job, it’s more than worth a dollar a cartridge to have a high-performance bullet designed for this particular task.

This is why hunting rounds like the Federal Premium and the Winchester Supreme sell so well in gun shops. This ammunition is bought by the serious hunters. Their research, and the anecdotal experience of their friends who have used it in the game fields, has convinced them to pay a few dollars extra to guarantee as much as possible the best performance when there is an opportunity for only one shot and the results are critical.

In the end, the smart hunters have done exactly what the cops did. They went with the reality of what worked in the field, in a way that was quantified and given credibility in the laboratory. This approach mirrored the collective, institutionalized learning experience of law enforcement in ammunition selection.

Some call it a combination of the Experiential Model and the Laboratory Model. Some might call it Reality Based Selection Protocol.

And some just call it common sense.

Choose your ammo...police style by Massad Ayoob Issue #93

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SmoothZ

I forget which grip I installed on the gun, but it does feel a bit better than the stock one. I have the .40 Sig.

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370zproject

io went and shot a sig xd-9 compact only problem i had is it was kinda hard to load >.> maybe im just a newbie lol

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Above 1200fps I stick with monolithic constructed bullets (Barnes) and Gold-Dot. (for my 357SIG).

For my 9mm, I use the newly re-designed ranger T-series +P+ loading (in an effort to make up for my G19's shorter barrel.) The extra velocity doesn't do much to a human target (witness the effectiveness of the .45ACP at 850fps), but for getting through car doors, and other barriers (Again, witness the .45ACP, and not in a good way this time), velocity is instrumental.

I have tired of the "knockdown power" "Hydrastatic shock", etc. etc. people always talk about with handguns. With a handgun bullet, aside from placement (which is #1 by FAR!), how big of a permanent cavity is made is what is important. FMJ usually leaves a permanent cavity around 66% the size of the caliber. JHP's, depending on how "flat" they expand to/the sharpness of the shoulder, usually leave a permanent cavity 85-9X% the size of the expanded slug.

Also, average expansion is what is important, not extreme expansion. That is, an average between the narrowest and largest expanded diameters are much more telling than the often cited largest diameter.

All that being said, barring an emotional shut-down, you are going to have to cause the target to lose enough blood-volume to shut down (roughly 20-30%), and no handgun is going to do that in a timely fashion without striking a major artery. Hit the CNS or hope they decide to stop coming or hit a major artery leading upward that will drop pressure FAST.

Robert_K

You do a lot of copying and pasting.

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